High-tech research to be displayed in Union

The Computer Science and Engineering Graduate Student Association will be holding its 19th Annual Graduate Conference Friday in the Student Union.

Computer sciences at UB is a cornerstone to research and technology development within the local and global communities, and the conference aims to displays the cutting edge research being preformed on campus.

It will also display, through paper and poster presentations, major breakthroughs and successes that the computer science and engineering (CSE) graduate students have achieved.

Students from other research areas within the university will also be presenting their work. These areas include the Center for Computational Research, Center for Excellence in Information Systems Assurance Research and Education, Center for Unified Biometrics and the Department of Electrical Engineering.

"Students get a chance to present and collectively they can see what their colleagues are doing. It's very beneficial," said Bharadwaj Jayaraman, professor and chair of the CSE department.

One of the many highlights and new features of this year's conference is the "academia-industry" panel discussion, which will feature leading figures in the computer sciences field.

"The panelists we have invited represent a few companies in and around the Buffalo area. We also hope that their experience and expectations from students can shed some light on how things are outside of school," Joy Gosh, conference chair and Ph.D. student in the CSE department, said in an e-mail.

The panel discussion will highlight the different achievements and trends in the computing industry and research fields.

"Academia lead the way before industry had it. The pendulum has swung between academia and industry," Jayaraman said. "Industry today can very well influence academia."

Other featured events include a lecture by Dr. Krishna Sivalingam from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

"The invited speaker is not only a very successful academic researcher, but more importantly is a UB CSE alumnus," Gosh said in an e-mail. "We hope that this will create a lot of enthusiasm amongst UB students in related field."

Sivalingam is a leader in computer networking and wireless communication, and he will be presenting an overview of his research, from his days at UB up to his current work at the University of Maryland.

Other events include several technical sessions that will cover many hot-button issues in computing and security today. Some of the issues are optical networks, wireless security, natural language processing, network graph theory and distributed collaborative visualization, just to name a few.

The conference is open to all university students and faculty. The day's events will kick off at 8 a.m. in the Student Union Social Hall and will continue in different areas of the SU throughout the day. Students and faculty outside the CSE major are encouraged to attend the conference events.

"Overall, this conference aims to generate awareness regarding (computer science) and related research at UB. When the attendees walk away from the conference, we expect them to be more knowledgeable about the different problems we are working on," Gosh said in an e-mail. "We hope that this can inspire them in their own work, and can lead to more minds getting together to solve interesting problems related to (computer science)."

To learn more about the CSE department or to obtain a copy of the technical program for the CSE Graduate Conference visit www.cse.buffalo.edu.